Given how things turned out between McLaren and Honda, you'd think the prospect of the two ever partnering again would be completely out of the question. But the team's executive director Zak Brown says otherwise.

"We are grateful to Honda,” said Brown in a television interview with Sky Sports (as cited by The Drive). “They're a great company, with great people, and the relationship was always strong. The relationship still is strong.”

“Wouldn't rule out racing with them again, wish them the best but we needed to make some tough decisions to do what's in our best interest.” Seriously? "Oh of course, absolutely," confirmed Brown.

This after three years of frustrations that saw McLaren saddled by an underperforming and unreliable Honda engine package that's largely blamed for the team's poor performance. In fact, these past three seasons have been the worst in McLaren's history since the late 1970s and early 1980s, before (now ousted chairman) Ron Dennis took over and ushered the team into the second most accomplished in the Formula One record books.

That includes a previous partnership in the late 1980s and early 90s that yielded four consecutive world championships with drivers like Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost behind the wheel. Maybe it's those glory days to which Brown is looking back. But for now, McLaren's moving on to Renault power, leaving Honda to work out the kinks with Toro Rosso instead.

Things clearly haven't been working in Honda's F1 engine program, and Honda knows it. That's probably why it's not only changing the guard, but completely reconfiguring the way its F1 operation runs.

Up to this point, the effort has been run by one Yasuke Hasegawa, who has worn two hats: one supervising the development of the powertrain at Honda's R&D facility in Japan, the other directing its application from the pit lane at grands prix and test sessions around at circuits around the world.

As Honda moves on from its partnership with McLaren to a new one with Toro Rosso, Hasegawa's position is now being split into two, with the role of technical director (for trackside operations) now falling to one Toyoharu Tanabe. Currently employed as a senior manager at Honda Performance Development in the US, Tanabe has been with Honda since 1984, working in F1 alongside the likes of Gerhard Berger (at McLaren) and Jenson Button (at BAR-Honda) as well as in IndyCars.

The official announcement made no mention of who will run the powertrain development program back in Sakura. However Autosport reports that the role will fall to Yasuaki Asaki, previously head of Honda's N series of JDM kei cars.

As for Hasegawa, he's now being simply listed as a researcher in Honda's R&D department. The changes are set to take effect as of January 1, 2018.

The participating teams will start unveiling their new F1 cars for 2018 in the coming weeks and months. But before they do, we have at least one more independent design to show you.

What we have here is a proposal for the forthcoming Toro Rosso STR13, done up by livery designer Sean Bull – complete with halo cockpit protection device, and all decked out in chrome (with some matte black detailing thrown in for contrast).

The appearance is an approach we last saw from McLaren, which abandoned the reflective coating for black (and then for orange) after it parted ways with Mercedes and embarked on its ill-fated partnership with Honda.

Now that Toro Rosso has picked up the Japanese engines instead, switching to a flashier livery could be just the ticket. But as cool as it looks here, we wouldn't count on the “other Scuderia” adopting this approach for the coming year.

The participating teams will start unveiling their new F1 cars for 2018 in the coming weeks and months. But before they do, we have at least one more independent design to show you.

What we have here is a proposal for the forthcoming Toro Rosso STR13, done up by livery designer Sean Bull – complete with halo cockpit protection device, and all decked out in chrome (with some matte black detailing thrown in for contrast).

The appearance is an approach we last saw from McLaren, which abandoned the reflective coating for black (and then for orange) after it parted ways with Mercedes and embarked on its ill-fated partnership with Honda.

Now that Toro Rosso has picked up the Japanese engines instead, switching to a flashier livery could be just the ticket. But as cool as it looks here, we wouldn’t count on the “other Scuderia” adopting this approach for the coming year.

After an encouraging start for Toro Rosso in their collaboration with Honda, sources suggest that, compared to Renault, their engine is now down on power by as little as 15 HP – considerably less than in previous years, when the Japanese manufacturer supplied McLaren.

This is turn has led Red Bull to believe that Honda will be able to catch up with Renault by the end of the 2018 Formula 1 season, which coincidentally is when Red Bull’s contract with the French company runs out.

“The engine is very light and now the reliability is there. They speak of continuous performance improvements. The engine should be at Renault level by the end of this year.”

Meanwhile, team principal Christian Horner is obviously happy to have a choice of engines for 2019: “Obviously we are in a position for the first time in probably the last 10 years that we have a choice moving forwards. That is a position that we have not been in for a long, long time. There has either been a veto or a block or a non desire from supplier to supplier.”

Both Horner as well as Marko have been impressed with how Honda have been performing for Toro Rosso, with Marko adding that the two companies already have a solid working relationship.

“Collaboration between Toro Rosso and Honda is very good, because we didn’t just tell the Japanese what the engine should look like. Immediately after signing the contract there was an exchange of technicians between Faenza, Sakura in Japan and Milton Keynes, where Honda also has a small factory. That’s where the current car and the engine installation were discussed and actually done.”

The new car will make its debut this weekend at the season’s opener in Melbourne, Australia. As for the future, if Toro Rosso is satisfied with their engine supplier’s performance, then a Honda-powered Red Bull could very well be in the cards for 2019.

It's long been talked about, but now we know that the rumors have come true. Beginning with the 2019 season, Red Bull will join its junior team Toro Rosso as a customer/works team for Honda's F1 efforts. Honda will be supplying two teams for the first time since their inauspicious return to F1 with McLaren in 2015.

Honda's results with Toro Rosso have been mixed so far, but in general the team has shown promising progress, with Honda's engines showing dramatic improvements in reliability and performance compared to the prior 3 seasons.

Hondao introduced an upgraded engine in Russia, but even though they utilized them in practice, Toro Rosso chose to wait until the Japanese Grand Prix to use them in a race.

Despite having to deal with up-shift oscillations and finishing outside the points at Suzuka, Toro Rosso still had a very encouraging weekend, getting both drivers into Q3, with Hartley starting the race P6 and Gasly right behind him in P7.

During qualifying, the two Toro Rosso cars were quicker than the Force Indias and the Renault works team in terms of pure pace, and if the FIA hadn’t forced them to revert the post shift ignition settings to a previous setup, they might even had performed better during the race.

All “what if’s” aside, Toro Rosso definitely passed the test as far as straight line speed is concerned, as both cars proved visibly more difficult to overtake, with rivals requiring DRS activation in order to get by.

“Today’s result was disappointing, given our excellent showing in qualifying yesterday,” stated Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe after the race. “Pierre ran in the points for much of the race, so it was unfortunate that he was unable to fight off Sainz in the closing stages and dropped down to eleventh.”

Of course, any improvement for Toro Rosso this year is also great news for Red Bull Racing, who will be switching to Honda power come 2019, when Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly will line up alongside Max Verstappen for the UK-based Austrian outfit.

The next four races on the calendar (US, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi) will be very interesting for the Honda-powered Toro Rossos, as all of those circuits feature long straights and/or high-speed corners.